Click Here to Donate Every spring, many of you who reside or travel within the Long Point Biosphere Region will have seen our female freshwater turtles risking their lives to crossroads and lay their eggs. And every spring, passionate Wildlife Road Watch volunteers like the celebrated Long Point turtle rescuer John Everett work through the heat, rain, and bugs to save as many of these vulnerable ladies as possible.
In 2024 our crew outdid themselves, not only by helping hundreds of turtles navigate roadkill hotspots, but also proving nest protectors and excavating nests in spots where the emerging hatchlings would have no hope of survival.
Well over 800 of these excavated eggs were transported to the Marshview Welcome and Education Centre at Long Point Eco Adventures to incubate for the 2024 summer. These eggs are the first ever collected for the Long Point Biosphere Region Turtle Hatchery and Exhibit!
They include midland painted, snapping, and norther map turtle eggs. Our mentors and colleagues at the Turtle Lab in the London Watershed Conservation Centre graciously took in many more clutches when we reached our processing capacity. This included all of our threatened Blanding’s turtle eggs.
None of this would have been possible without the generous donations our community contributed alongside support from the Long Point Biosphere Region, Eco Adventures, Scott Gillingwater and his Turtle Lab team in London, our amazing Wildlife Road Watch volunteers, Environment and Climate Change Canada through the LPWF Priority Place’s Road Ecology Working Group, Eco-Kare International, and Eco Canada.
We now have an urgent need for materials and funds to complete the task and, we hope, establish the hatchery as a permanent facility serving the Long Point Biosphere Region.
If we’ve done it right, thousands of hatching turtles will peck their way out of their shells in the years ahead. But each must be health checked, measured, weighed, and finally released into the marsh and this must be within 1 km of where their mothers originally laid them. At the same time, we hope to have a multi-faceted exhibit in place to educate students, visitors, and area residents about the need for road ecology projects. This will help address the core problem facing our turtles (deaths on roads) that make volunteer road patrols and nest excavation necessary.
Please consider contributing to the Long Point Biosphere Region Turtle Hatchery!
Or Volunteer for Wildlife Road Watch
If you are not able to contribute financially but wish to help another way, please consider joining Wildlife Road Watch, our volunteer program. You will be trained to safely help turtles cross roads and to identify turtle nests for excavation along several key nesting hotspots.
If you are interested, please consider subscribing at wildlifeonroads.com or reach out to Lauren at lnightingale@eco-kare.com for more information.
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